To me alone there came a thought of griefs
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong:
· · · · ·
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay....
_Ode_, W. W.
For the rest of the day Paul was in peculiarly good spirits; he went
about the place full of bedevilment of all kinds, to the astonishment of
the household in general and of his sister in particular. The oppressive
heat seemed to have no effect upon him. There was something in the air
that excited him, and he was very busy getting rid of the excitement.
With bedtime came no desire to sleep. ‘I feel all worked-up, Margaret,’
he said as he lit her candle in the hall. ‘I think it must be an
“aventure” coming,’—though, of course, she had no idea what he meant.
‘There’s thunder about,’ she replied. ‘It’s been so very close all day.’
‘Sleep well,’ Paul said when he left her at the top of the stairs; and
the last thing he heard as he went down the long winding passage to his
bedroom in the west wing was her voice faintly assuring him ‘One always
does here, I’m glad to say.’
Once inside, and the door shut, he gave himself up to his mood. It was a
mood apparently that came from nowhere. A soft and mysterious
excitement, all delicious, stirred in the depths of his being, rising
slowly to the surface. Perhaps it was growing-pains somewhere in the
structure of his personality, engineered subconsciously by his
imagination; perhaps only ‘weather.’ He always followed the barometer
like a strip of dried seaweed.
But on this particular night something more than mere ‘weather’ was
abroad; his nerves sent a succession of swift faint warnings to his
brain. To begin with, the night herself claimed definite attention. Some
nights are just ordinary nights; others touch the soul and whisper ‘I am
the night. Look at me. Listen!’
He obeyed the summons and went to the window, leaning out as his habit
was. The darkness pressed up in a solid wall, charged to the brim with
mysteries waiting to reveal themselves. No trees were visible, no
outline of moor or hill or garden. The sky was pinned down to the
horizon more tightly than usual—keeping back all manner of things. Very
little air crept beneath the edges, so that the atmosphere was
oppressive. The day had been cloudless, but with the sunset whole
continents of vapour had climbed upon the hills of the evening wind,
driven slowly by high currents that had not yet come near enough the
earth to be heard and felt.
He coughed—gently. The least noise, he felt, would shatter some soft and
delicate structure that rose everywhere through the darkness—some
web-like shadow-scaffolding that reared upwards, supporting the night.
‘Something’s going to happen,’ he said low to himself. ‘I can feel it
coming.’
He became very imaginative, enjoying his mood enormously, letting it act
as a mental purge. Aventures that he would discover for the next Meeting
swept through him. The stress and fever of creative fancy, stirred by
the deep travailing of the elements behind that curtain of night, was
upon him. Then, sleep being far away, he went to the writing-table,
where Nixie’s deft hands had everything prepared, lit a second candle,
and began to write.
‘I’ll write “How I climbed the Scaffolding of the Night,”’ he murmured;
‘for I feel it true within me. I feel as if I were part of the
night—part of all this beautiful soft darkness.’
But, before he had written a dozen lines, he stopped and fell to
listening again, staring past the steady candle-flames out into the
open. The stillness was profound. A single ivy-leaf rattled sharply all
by itself on the wall outside his window. He felt as if that leaf tapped
faintly upon his own brain. By a curious process known only to the
poetic temperament, he passed on to _feel with_ everything about him—as
though some portion of himself actually merged in with the silence, with
the perfumes of trees and garden, with the voice of that little tapping
leaf. And, in proportion as he realised this, he transferred the magic
of it to his tale. He found the words that fitted his conception like a
natural skin. He knew in some measure the satisfaction and relief of
expression.
‘A year ago—a month ago,’ he thought with delight, ‘this would have been
impossible to me. Nixie has taught me so much already!’
What he really wanted, of course, were the living, flaming words of
poetry. But this he knew was denied him; perhaps the fire of inspiration
did not burn steadily enough; perhaps the intellectual foundation was
not there. At any rate, he could only do his best and struggle with the
prose, and this he did with intense pleasure.
After a time he laid his pen down and fell to thinking again—the kind of
reverie that dramatises a mood before the inner vision. And another
inspiration came upon him with its sudden little glory; he realised
vividly that _within_ himself a region existed where all that he desired
might find fulfilment; where yearnings, dreams, desires might come true.
There existed this inner place within where he might visualise all he
most wished for into a state of reality. The workshop of the creative
imagination was its vestibule....
Whether or not he could put it into words for others to realise was
merely a question of craft....
He must have sat thinking in this way much longer than he knew, for the
candles had burnt down quite low when at length he bestirred himself
with a mighty yawn and rose to go to bed. But hardly had he begun to
unfasten his crumpled black tie when something made him pause.
Far away, through the hush that covered the world, that ‘something’ was
astir—coming swiftly nearer. He stepped back into the middle of the room
and waited. Smoke, the sleeping black cat on the sofa, sat up and waited
too. Looking about it with brilliant green eyes, wide open, and whiskers
twitching backwards and forwards, it understood even better than he did
that a change in all that world of darkness had come to pass. The animal
stared alternately at the window and the door.
For another minute the stillness held supreme. Then, from the silent
reaches beyond, this new sound came suddenly close, dropping down
through leagues of night. It began with a faint roar in the chimney; a
tree outside uttered a soft, rushing cry; a thousand leaves, instead of
one, rattled on the wall.
A Messenger, running headlong through the darkness, was calling aloud a
warning as it ran, for all to understand who could. And, among the few
who were awake and understood, Paul and his four-footed companion were
certainly the first.
A sudden movement of the vast fabric of darkness came next. That
scaffolding of shadows trembled, as though the same moment it would fall
and let in—Light. In front of the bow window the muslin curtain that so
long had hung motionless, now bellied out slowly into the room. The
movement, mysterious and suggestive, claimed attention significantly.
Paul and Smoke, watching it, exchanged glances. Then, with a long,
sighing sound, it floated back again to its original position. It hung
down straight and still as before.
But in that moment something had entered the room. Borne by this
messenger of the coming storm, this stray Wind had left its warning—and
was gone!
Smoke leapt softly down and padded over to sniff the curtain, and having
done so, blinked up at Paul with eloquent eyes, and sat back to wait
and—wash! No apparatus of speech ever said more plainly ‘Look out!
Something’s coming! Better be prepared as I am!’
And something did come—almost the same minute. The forces that had so
long been trying to upset the tent of darkness, did upset it, and from
one uplifted corner there rushed down upon the world a blue-white sheet
of light that was utterly gorgeous. For one instant trees, moor, hill
leaped into vivid outline. The hands that held the sheet of brilliance
shook it from the four corners, and all the sky shook with it; and,
immediately after, the scaffolding of night fell with a prodigious
crash, as the true storm, following upon its herald, descended with a
hundred thunders and the roar of ten hundred trumpets.
The true wind rushed headlong into the room and extinguished both
candles. Smoke rubbed against Paul’s feet in the darkness, thoroughly
aroused; but Paul himself stood still, as the thrill and splendour of it
all entered his heart and filled him with delight. Thunder, lightning,
wind—all passed mysteriously into his blood till he was almost conscious
of a desire to add the sound of his own voice and shout aloud. The
excitement of the elemental forces swept into himself. He understood now
the signs of preparation that had been going forward in him during the
day.
Splendid sensations, the most splendid he ever knew, raced to and fro in
his being, till it almost seemed as if his consciousness transferred
itself to the tempest. Surely, that great wind tore out of his heart,
that lightning sprang from his brain, that river of rain washed, not
merely out of the sky, but out of himself. The edges of his personality
became fluid and melted off into the very nature of the elements....
‘Now,’ he exclaimed aloud, pacing to and fro while Smoke followed him in
the darkness and tried to play with the bows on his pumps, ‘had I but
the means of expression, what a message I could give to the world, of
beauty, splendour, power!’ He laughed in his excitement. ‘If only the
strings of my poor instrument had been tuned——!’
Sighing a little to himself at the thought, he went to the window. The
first fury of the storm had passed; there was a sudden deep lull broken
only by the rushing drip of rain; he smelt the wet foliage and soaking
grass. Close to the window, it chanced, there was a dead tree, and in
its leafless branches, outlined sharply by the lightning against the
black sky, he traced what seemed the huge letters of some elemental
alphabet; and at that moment, the returning wind passed through them
like a hand on giant strings. It drew forth a wonderful sound in
response, a sound that pierced as a two-edged sword to the centre of his
being. It was a true singing wind—a Wind of Inspiration.
And, as he heard it, the great wave that fought for utterance rose
within him and began to force and tear its way out in spite of
everything. Words came pouring through him—like the stammering of torn
strings upon a fiddle—clipped wings trying to fly—sparks streaming
towards flame yet never achieving it. Similes and metaphors rushed,
mixed and headlong, through his mind. In a moment he had dashed across
the floor; the candles were again alight; and Paul, pencil in hand, was
sitting at the table before a sheet of blank foolscap, the storm
crashing about him, and Smoke watching him calmly with eyes full of
expectant wonder.
And then was enacted a little drama—tragedy if ever there was one—that
must often enough take place in the secret places of the world’s houses,
where the dumb poet seeks to transfer his genuine passion into the
measure of halting and inadequate verse. Poignantly dramatic the
spectacle must be, though never witnessed mercifully by an audience of
more than one. Paul wrote fast, setting the words down almost as they
came. It was that little passionate Wind of Inspiration that was the
cause of all the trouble. Smoke jumped up on the table to watch the
motion of the pencil across the paper. For some reason he hardly thought
it worth while to play with it:
The Winds of Inspiration blow,
Yet pass me ever by;
And songs God taught me long ago,
Unuttered burn and—die.
He read the verse over, and with an impatient motion altered ‘burn’ into
‘fade.’ Then he shook his head and continued:
From all the far blue hills of heaven
The dews of beauty rain;
Yet unto me no drops are given
To quench the ancient pain.
He scratched out ‘ancient’ and wrote over the top ‘undying.’ Then he
scratched out ‘undying’ and put ‘ancient’ back in its place. This time
Smoke stretched out a long black paw with a velvet end to it and gave
the pencil a deliberate dab. Paul either ignored, or did not notice it;
but Smoke left the paw thrust forward upon the paper so as to be ready
for the next dab.
I know the passion of the night,
Full of all days unborn,—
Full of the yearning of the light
For one undying Morn.
Smoke caught the tip of the pencil with a swift and accurate stroke, and
the ‘M’ of ‘Morn’ was provided with an irregular tail Paul had not
intended. Very quickly, however, without further interruption, he wrote
on to the end.
Above the embers of my heart,
Waiting the Living Breath;
The sparks fly listlessly apart—
Then circle to their death.
Dead sparks that gathered ne’er to flame,
Nor felt the kiss of fire!
Dead thoughts that never found the name
To spell their deep desire!
Is then this instrument so poor
That it may never sound
Songs that must pass for evermore
Unuttered and uncrowned?
O soul that fain would’st steal heaven’s fire,
Who clipped thy golden wings?
Who made so passionate a lyre,
Then never tuned the strings?
The Winds of Inspiration blow,
Yet pass me ever by;
And songs God taught me long ago,
Lost in the silence—die.
He rose from the table with a gesture of abrupt impatience and read the
entire effusion through from beginning to end. First he laughed, then he
sighed. He wondered for a moment how it was that so little of his
passion had crept into the poor words. He crumpled up the paper and
tossed it into the drawer; and then, blowing out the candles, moved over
to the big arm-chair and dropped down into it. Again, as he sat there,
his thoughts fell to dramatising his mood. He imagined that region
within himself where all might come true, and all yearnings find
adequate expression. The idea got more and more mingled with the storm.
He pictured it to himself with extraordinarily vivid detail.
‘There _is_ such a place, such a state,’ he murmured, ‘and it is, it
must be accessible.’
He heard the clock in the stables—or was it the church—strike the
quarter before midnight.
As he sat in the big chair, Smoke left the table and curled up again on
the mat at his feet.